Il fiocco rosso - Giuseppe Amisani

(Mede PV 1881 - Portofino GE 1941)
Cm 69x55 | In 27.17x21.65
Oil on panel
Giuseppe Amisani known as "the painter of Kings," was born to Giovanni, a tobacconist by profession, and Marianna Gorea, in Mede in Piazza Mercato now Piazza Amisani. He moved in 1895 to Milan, living at the sculptor Felice Bialetti's, ten years older who would die very young. Giuseppe, will have a very difficult beginning, taking Tallone's courses at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts from a window climbing on the bricklayers' scaffolding. He later managed to raise the money to enroll regularly at the Brera Academy and had Cesare Tallone, Emilio Gola, and Vespasiano Bignami as his teachers. But because of his painterly nature, "unprejudiced with mildness, free and at the same time gentle," he immediately approached the Milanese post-romanticists such as Bianchi, Conconi, Carcano, Cremona, and Gola. She began her studies at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, abandoning them only to resume them a few years later. During his studies in Milan, given little money, he had to borrow every night the candle of a Madonna in a street wayside shrine near his home in order to practice painting at night. In 1900 he suddenly began his success thanks to one of his works, which became famous and was later named "The Lustful Cleopatra." He returned to Mede and frescoed several churches in his village, the Church of the Confraternity in Candia Lomellina and the Church of the Trinity, which can be visited today. He obtained his first awards with the Opera the "Doctor," which earned him the Mylius Prize. Meanwhile he specialized passionately on portraits, his notoriety was consecrated in 1908 thanks to his portrait "the Hero," which again won the Mylius prize; he thus entered fully into Milanese artistic life. Soon afterwards he moved to Paris, and began to associate with the leading painters of his time, finding new inspiration and maturity at the height of the Belle Époque. He achieved great success with "Portrait of Lyda Borelli," with which he won the Fumagalli Prize in 1912; the work would be bought by the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil and later resold. He devoted himself more and more to portraits, his most important works in fact having as their subject the close-ups of women's faces, but he also produced works on landscapes, particularly English and African landscapes. Due to his new success, he traveled in 1912 and then again the following year to South America where he won great admiration, and executed portraits of a number of ministers and Brazilian Government President Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, as well as portraits of Brazilian high society ladies. He was also a skilled landscape painter during his repeated travels to America, North Africa, England, France and Rhodes, but he became increasingly passionate about the study of painting female faces, and on these began his major reflections from 1914 onward, he would create with in fact with this theme his most valuable Works, between Milan and London, although the production would not be as fertile, making them rare. In his moment of greatest maturity he opened his painting studio in London where his fame became greater and greater still for his portraits of women's faces, which acquired more and more interest and value internationally thus very frequently became part of the private collections of European noble families who appreciated his style. His works, are now well known on several continents while in his London studio, he fell in love with a young London girl, who interrupted his artistic activity every afternoon by trying to sell him candles. Meanwhile, he traveled to exhibit his work receiving more and more invitations, to Holland, Spain, America, Cairo, Rhodes, Algeria, England, France, Rome, Milan, Venice, Buenos Aires and São Paulo, Brazil. King Fu'ad I of Egypt, having learned of the notoriety and elegance of his works, decided to call him to fresco the palace of Ra's al-Tin, which he totally rebuilt and transformed for use as the Royal Palace and seat of government.It was in the studio of these lights, where he stayed from 1922 to 1925, that he began to paint African landscapes. In 1926 following an invitation from the Governor of Rhodes he painted the lights of the Aegean. In 1927 he traveled to Algeria. His drawings and paintings are considered very special thanks to the chromatic afflatuses in which glazing is replaced by vigorous strokes of the palette knife, a revolutionary and innovative technique at the time despite the classicism and elegance of the portraits made of grays, shadows and lights that give the faces a surprising verism. Peculiarity is that many of the most interesting works are done in oil on cardboard, which creates special visual effects. He mainly painted portraits of high rank, of noble princes and princesses, for which he would be called "the Painter of Kings," but he was never a court painter and a simple portrait painter. The Biblioteca Franzoniana describes him as, "A painter of traditional training, he was no stranger to eclectic inclinations"; Giovanni Luigi Zucchini states that his portraits move from a layout initially still tied to tradition toward a looser vision, close to Art Nouveau stylistic features, to "characters strongly profiled in light by strokes of spatula densely charged with color and finally to the figures and landscapes painted in Egypt, where light stands out strongly in images of strong contrasts between light and shadow, in a poignancy of chromatic matter strongly exhibited." Amisani often painted female nudes, with full-bodied and warm sensuality. In the faces of his women, art critic Calzini notes "a terrible reflection" of his voluptuous nature. In this portrait, too, the sabers of color do not break the heavy enchantment of the atmosphere, in which the senses, instinct, seem to triumph. Nothing is metaphysical, untangled, meditated; rather one must note the almost supine adherence to the gustocorrente, to the sick baroque of D'Annunzio extraction (Ricci Oddi Museum). While his early late scapigliate works have above all light colors, those of his full maturity take on vivid accents of darker hues and greater intensities. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1941 while walking with Salvator Gotta on the shore of Portofino, where he often stayed and painted. Some works Portraits: Self-Portrait (now at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence) Marco Praga (now at the Museo della Scala in Milan) Pope Benedict XV, Crown Prince Umberto II of Savoy, Lord Chamberlain, Cleopatra Lussuriosa, The Uncle, The English Lord, Mr. Candia, The Hero, The Doctor, The Dance of Apaches, President Rodriguez Alvez, The Japanese Robe, The Telette, Portraits of Giosuè Carducci, Mario Sammarco, Poet De Stefani, General Gatti, General Cadorna, Actor Warkfield. Also: Portrait of Michele Bernocchi, textile entrepreneur, donor to the Milan Triennale La Toeletta, 1818 (Milan Gallery of Modern Art) At the window Maternal love Portrait of Marco Praga (Milan La Scala Museum) Portrait of the furniture designer Carlo Zen , 1911 Portrait of Giosuè Carducci Male portrait , 1938 Portrait in a studio Portrait of a seated man Portrait, 1926 Self-portrait II The red parasol The vase of flowers Vase of flowers II Vase of flowers III The Hunter The Madonna of flowers Still life with flowers The Peasant's family The Peasant Portrait of Emilio Pagani , Pinacoteca dell'Ospedale Maggiore, Milan Landscapes: Glimpse of London Glimpse of London II View of Portofino Stopover in the desert Strangeness in Morocco , 1920 Marktszene, Samarkand View of the Pier in Chioggia Landscape II Landscape, 1919 Vicolo di Napoli Riccione The entrance to the villa Milan, view of the navigli The Cathedral of Malines Famous Portraits: (His most treasured productions were portraits of women and particularly their faces). Portrait of Lyda Borelli, oil on cardboard panel. Love in London (Love in L [...]